Plex client for Zidoo devices - ZidooPlexMod

Yes it works and I see the currentPosition advance as I refresh:

{"status":200,"video":{"status":1,"title":"Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom (2023)","path":"\/mnt\/smb\/192.168.2.11#MediaHDDs\/Data3\/MOVIES_UHDBR_DV_HDR\/Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom (2023).mkv","currentPosition":438994,"duration":7448480,"width":3840,"height":2160,"fps":23.97599983215332,"formt":"H265","filesize":"59.15 GiB","bitrate":"68.2 Mb\/s","output":"3840X2160P @ 59.94Hz YUV420 10Bits VS10-HDR10","subtitleInfo":"English(English (SDH)) PGS (1\/3)","audioInfo":"English Dolby TrueHD with Dolby Atmos 48.0KHz (1\/2)"},"subtitle":{"index":1,"information":"English(English (SDH)) PGS (1\/3)"},"audio":{"index":0,"information":"English Dolby TrueHD with Dolby Atmos 48.0KHz (1\/2)"},"playMode":{"index":0,"information":"Off"},"zoom":{"index":1,"information":"Fit"},"3D":{"index":-1,"information":"","isMvc3D":false}}

I'm not surprised as everything time related is working correctly including updating the Plex server so that next time I continue where I left off etc. Only the popup windows is remaining as an "annoyance".

 

Ok, yeah that looks ok but it's possible the parser is getting caught on something and causing issues. Hopefully the other test I asked you to run will show something. Otherwise maybe I can add more debug code to the monitor process.

 

That's the best I can get... that last line is wacked with zeros everywhere... I don't know if it's normal or not but I played back the movie for at least 2 mins before quitting and kodi crashing and that's all that was logged.

That may be the reason Kodi crashes... it seems the monitor works ok in ZDMC but not in Kodi maybe? Maybe try to make it work in Kodi 21 on your Z9X Pro as I can't get logs on ZDMC. Do you get logs in ZDMC on your Z9X Pro?

My guess is as soon as I press Play on the PlexToZidoo debug screen, the call to the Zidoo Player occurs, playback starts and then the monitor returns zeros and Kodi crashes right away and I only see that it crashed after I stop playback.

P.S. I checked the same thing in ZDMC on Z9X Pro and I see the first monitor scan with all the zeros too and then all the following lines of monitor scanning are OK with correct values, so that first line with zeros seems normal as the monitor service gets initialized I guess? Still, I think something crashes Kodi as this happens versus ZDMC does not crash. I don't understand why I can't get logs on ZDMC on the Z9X 8K it makes no sense.

 

Those values you're seeing are from the Zidoo player API. As I said before it can take up to 10 seconds for them to start responding with valid data. But based on your kodi log it looks like the monitor service starts up just fine. I'll see if I can get kodi 21 installed on my Z9X Pro to see if it crashes the same way.

 

I installed Kodi 21 on my Z9X Pro and it worked just fine. So something with the 8K and Kodi 21.

I do have a ZidooPlexMod beta I'd like you to try in ZDMC. I tried to kill the failure window in a different location. My guess is there may be more issues but hopefully this gets rid of the message.

 

Tried it and it's the same behavior as before unfortunately.

 

That is unfortunate. Without debug logs on the ZDMC and Kodi 21 flat out dying I'm not sure how to debug these issues.

 

I don't know either, maybe if @mirror has an idea why the logs don't appear in ZDMC we can debug with ZDMC?

Do you think the popup bug has to do with the Z9X 8K being faster with the new SoC?

 

I just pushed 0.3.10 of ZidooPlexMod out to the bowlingbeeg.kodi repo. This pulls in the upstream PM4K 0.7.9-rev2. The change log is huge, you can check it out here, https://forums.plex.tv/t/pm4k-plexmod-for-kodi-18-19-20-21/481208/2744 . One thing you'll notice is that after the update you will encounter a long delay starting ZidooPlexMod as it tries to build the XML files required for the screens. This is new and is part of the theming engine so please be patient as it builds the files. Since this was another huge update let me know if anything broke. Trying to merge all of these changes isn't simple.

 

I wanted to ask you when you would update to that version. I already got that auto install itself on my Dune and Ugoos where I am using the original PM4K and I saw the xml compilation thing on top right but it's fast on these players. I will try on the Z9X 8K but on the Z9X Pro I might not do it as it's my only stable player right now and I want to keep it that way. I'm not even on the latest FW because it's stable.

 

0.3.10 works correctly.

The Zidoo team just came out with ZDMC 21 and @blenky says it works well with Plex For Zidoo. Will test it to see if the popup is still there but I think it's not there anymore according to blenky.

 

@blenky , @bowlingbeeg , tested ZDMC 21.0 + ZidooPlexMod 0.3.10 + PlexToZidoo 2.8 beta 5 and here are my findings:
- I still see the "failed to start Zidoo player" popup when I stop playback sometimes just like before.
- I am getting some ZDMC crashes back do dashboard sometimes when I stop a video. Kodi 21 also crashes back to desktop when I stop playback but it crashes every single time where with ZDMC 21 it crashes sometimes only.
- I often do not get a picture back from HDMI when I stop playback and need to change input from my AVR and go back to the Zidoo input to get a picture back. This never happens in ZDMC 20.2. This may be setup specific if you are not getting this but it's a deal breaker for me.

The good news is that I have logs now in ZDMC 21 and since I don't crash back to dashboard every single time we can get back to debugging the "failed to start Zidoo player" popup.

 

@bowlingbeeg ,
Here is a ZDMC 21.0 kodi.log right after I get the popup error after stopping playback of Aquaman 2. I played back the movie for some time as you can see in the log.

Hope it can help!

 

Pretty much my experience with limited testing. Getting quite a few crashes back to desktop and seeing 'failed to start Zidoo player' in most cases. About 50% of the time when I press stop the screen blanks momentarily and then returns still image of scene where I pressed stop for about a second before exiting to Plex. I haven't see a total loss of HDMI though.

 

I also see the blank followed by a freeze frame sometimes. I think ZDMC 20.2 is still the way to go unless ZDMC 21.0 can get fixed to work better with ZidooPlexMod + PlexToZidoo.

 

Sorry, I'm out of town for the next week and a half so I won't have time to look into this until I get back.

 

No problem, thanks!

 

@Creator44, I was able to look at your debug log and I do see some interesting things in the status query. On the Z9X/Z9X Pro there are usually lots of bad status calls at the beginning until the movie gets going and then when it ends we'll get a status that indicates it's stopped. In your log we get a good status call right away on the first try and then at the end we don't get the stopped indicator but instead we get the bad status calls. I think that's why I'm leaving the "error" message up but the traces seem to indicate we should still be closing it out so I'm not sure what's going on. Here is a ZidooPlexMod beta that has some more tracing in it. Can you give it a try and post the results. Thanks

 

I just got the z9x 8k, and seems to have the same issue as describe above with Plex.
Based on the latest discussion, it seems that we dont have a fix yet, is it correct?
---
Also, new to Zidoo, when Plex runs with Zidoo, does it have the same function as Plex on the Shield? For example the chapter picture when scrolling through a movie?

 

Yeah, right now it's not fully working. I don't have the new device so I've been working with @Creator44 to try and get it working.

No it's not exactly the same as the Plex client on the shield but it does have a lot of the same functionality and it has more of the Plex functionality than the Zidoo built in Plex app. Both use the native Zidoo player so you would get the native OSD while playing a movie. On the Z9X and Z9X Pro lines there isn't a chapter picture to scroll through and select. I don't know about the new line.